Barony

# Barony with Intel Core Ultra 5 225 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060

This combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 delivers playable performance across most settings in Barony, a roguelike title from 2015. The combo ranks 2308th out of 2935 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle tier of all tested systems. This ranking reflects a pairing where the GPU, despite being an older Turing-generation part, still manages to push respectable frame rates at lower resolutions, while the CPU's strong single-thread performance helps maintain consistency in a genre that often relies on rapid procedural generation and physics calculations.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo's rank of 2308 out of 2935 tested configurations places it at roughly the 78th percentile of all tested combinations — meaning about 78% of tested systems outperform it. This is a modest position, but the actual frame rate data tells a more nuanced story than the raw rank suggests. The ranking is heavily influenced by the GPU's age and the fact that many tested combos pair newer graphics cards with comparable or better processors.

Looking at the individual components, the RTX 2060 sits at the 58th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 15290. Its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are remarkably close: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 scores 15283 (0% delta), the AMD Radeon 680M scores 15270 (0.1% ahead of the RTX 2060), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM scores 15199 (0.6% behind), and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 scores 15171 (0.8% behind). This clustering indicates that in general compute workloads, the RTX 2060 performs essentially on par with a much older GTX 580 and a modern integrated GPU, though its real-world gaming performance in Barony is still acceptable.

The CPU, meanwhile, is far stronger relative to its peers. The Core Ultra 5 225 sits at the 85th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 36938. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F at 36945 (0% delta), the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D at 37018 (0.2% behind the Ultra 5), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 at 37093 (0.4% behind), and the Intel Core i9-12900T at 37112 (0.5% behind). The CPU's strong positioning means that in Barony, where the game's procedural generation and logic can be CPU-sensitive, the processor is unlikely to be the primary bottleneck.

The overall combo rank of 2308 is therefore a reflection of the GPU's modest standing rather than any systemic weakness in the pairing. The data indicates a system that can handle Barony comfortably at high settings on 1080p and 1440p, with the GPU becoming the limiting factor primarily at 4K Ultra settings.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured frame rate data, the optimal balance between visual quality and performance varies by resolution. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 261 FPS, which is far beyond what any display can show and indicates significant headroom. The Medium preset still produces 194 FPS average with a minimum of 165 FPS, making it a strong choice for high-refresh-rate monitors. The High preset at 167 FPS average remains excellent, and even Ultra maintains 120 FPS average. For 1080p, High is the recommended preset as it provides a substantial visual upgrade over Medium while still maintaining an average well above 144 FPS, with no measurable downside in this data.

At 2560x1440, the picture changes slightly. Low produces 165 FPS average, Medium delivers 123 FPS average with a minimum of 104 FPS, High reaches 105 FPS average, and Ultra drops to 76 FPS average. The Medium preset is the sweet spot here, offering a 60% improvement in average frame rate over High while still staying above 100 FPS minimum — a comfortable margin for smooth gameplay. High is acceptable for those prioritizing visuals, but the step from Medium to High costs 18 FPS on average, which is noticeable on 144Hz displays.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor. Low produces 86 FPS average, Medium drops to 64 FPS average with a minimum of 55 FPS, High falls to 55 FPS average, and Ultra manages only 39 FPS average. For 4K, the Low preset is the only one that maintains consistently high frame rates, though Medium is still playable with a 64 FPS average. The jump from Low to Medium costs 22 FPS, and from Medium to High another 9 FPS, making High and Ultra poor choices at this resolution unless the player prioritizes visual fidelity over frame rate consistency.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Barony at 4K Ultra settings?

A: No. The measured data shows 39 FPS average at 3840x2160 Ultra settings, which falls below the 60 FPS threshold generally considered necessary for smooth gameplay. The GPU is the limiting factor at this resolution and preset combination.

Q: What is the best resolution for this system in Barony?

A: The data indicates 2560x1440 Medium is the strongest combination of visual quality and performance, with a 123 FPS average and a 104 FPS minimum. This provides a high-quality image while maintaining frame rates well above typical display refresh rates.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 261 FPS, while Ultra averages 120 FPS. This represents a 141 FPS difference, or roughly 2.2x the frame rate of Ultra when using Low settings.

Q: Does the CPU hold back the GPU in this game?

A: The data suggests the CPU is not a bottleneck at most settings. The Core Ultra 5 225 ranks at the 85th percentile among all CPUs, and the frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K shows typical GPU-bound behavior, with significant drops as resolution increases. Only at 1080p Low (261 FPS) does the CPU potentially approach its limit, though the exact headroom cannot be determined from the provided data.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 compare to its nearest GPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 2060 posts an average benchmark score of 15290, which is essentially tied with the GTX 580 at 15283 (0% delta), 0.1% ahead of the Radeon 680M at 15270, 0.6% ahead of the RTX 3050 OEM at 15199, and 0.8% ahead of the RX 7600 at 15171. These differences are within noise for most workloads.

Q: Is the 6 GB VRAM sufficient for Barony?

A: The measured frame rates do not show any indication of VRAM-related stuttering or performance degradation across the tested settings and resolutions. The game's 2015 release date and roguelike genre likely keep memory requirements modest, though the specific VRAM usage is not provided in the data.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings shows a wide performance envelope. Low settings produce an average of 261 FPS, representing the absolute ceiling for this combo at this resolution. Medium settings yield 194 FPS average with a minimum of 165 FPS and a maximum of 224 FPS, demonstrating excellent consistency with no frame drops below the high refresh rate threshold. High settings average 167 FPS, still well above 144 FPS for smooth high-refresh gameplay. Ultra settings drop to 120 FPS average, which remains playable on standard 60Hz displays and most 120Hz monitors, though it sacrifices the headroom seen at lower presets.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance scales as expected with the increased pixel count. Low settings average 165 FPS, matching the 1080p High preset's output. Medium settings deliver 123 FPS average with a minimum of 104 FPS and a maximum of 141 FPS, keeping the experience above 100 FPS at all measured points. High settings produce 105 FPS average, a 15% reduction from Medium while offering improved visuals. Ultra settings fall to 76 FPS average, which is still above 60 FPS but begins to show the GPU's limitations at higher resolutions.

At 3840x2160, the GPU's age becomes apparent. Low settings manage 86 FPS average, which is playable but significantly lower than the 1440p results. Medium settings produce 64 FPS average with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 74 FPS, placing the experience right at the edge of smooth gameplay — the 55 FPS minimum indicates occasional dips below 60 FPS. High settings drop to 55 FPS average, which will show visible stutter on standard 60Hz displays. Ultra settings fall to 39 FPS average, making this preset impractical for anything other than static screenshots or turn-based play.

The data shows a clear pattern: at 1080p, all presets are playable with Ultra still maintaining 120 FPS; at 1440p, Medium through Ultra remain above 76 FPS; at 4K, only Low and Medium approach acceptable frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the Turing architecture using the TU106 chip, manufactured on a 12 nm process at TSMC. It contains 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die. The GPU has 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output units, along with 30 ray tracing cores and 240 tensor cores. Its peak pixel rate is 80.64 GPixel/s, texture rate is 201.6 GTexel/s, and FP32 performance reaches 6.451 TFLOPS.

The memory subsystem consists of 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, running at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) for a total bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s. This configuration provides sufficient memory bandwidth for Barony's requirements, as evidenced by the consistent frame times across the medium settings that report minimum and maximum FPS values. The 6 GB capacity is adequate for this game at the tested resolutions, with no indication of memory-related performance drops.

The GPU's boost clock of 1680 MHz and base clock of 1365 MHz are modest by modern standards, and the 160 W TDP reflects the Turing generation's power characteristics. The percentile rank of 58 among all GPUs places it slightly above the midpoint, and its average benchmark score of 15290 is closely matched by several rivals. The data suggests that in Barony specifically, the RTX 2060 performs as expected for its class — capable of high frame rates at lower resolutions, but increasingly challenged as resolution scales up.

The GPU's role as the primary bottleneck at 4K is clear from the frame rate data. The 55 FPS average at 4K High and 39 FPS at 4K Ultra indicate that the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth are insufficient to maintain high frame rates at this resolution, regardless of the CPU's capabilities. The synthetic benchmarks support this interpretation, with the GPU's PassMark G3D score of 14111 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1242 reflecting mid-range performance.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 is a 10-core, 10-thread processor based on the Arrow Lake architecture, manufactured on a 3 nm process at TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 192 KB of L1 per core, 3 MB of L2 per core, and 20 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in dual-channel configuration with a bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s.

Synthetic benchmarks show strong performance: Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 25891 and single-core score of 3655, Cinebench R20 multi-core of 6317 and single-core of 891, and Cinebench R15 multi-core of 2609 and single-core of 368. PassMark results include a multi-thread score of 30459, single-thread score of 4412, and physics score of 2342. The CPU's percentile rank of 85 among all CPUs indicates it outperforms 85% of tested processors.

In Barony, the CPU's role appears secondary to the GPU at most settings. The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K follows a pattern typical of GPU-bound scenarios — as resolution increases and pixel count grows, frame rates drop proportionally, indicating the GPU is the limiting component. The CPU's strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core of 3655) is well-suited for a roguelike game, which often involves complex game logic, procedural generation, and AI calculations that benefit from high per-core performance.

The CPU's 10 cores and 10 threads provide ample parallel processing for any background tasks or game-related threads. The 20 MB of shared L3 cache is substantial and helps reduce memory latency for frequently accessed data. The 3 nm process node and 17,800 million transistors on a 243 mm² die represent a modern, efficient design that maintains high performance while keeping power consumption at 65 W.

The nearest rival comparisons show the Ultra 5 225 is effectively tied with several other processors in average benchmark scores, all within 0.5% of each other. This suggests that in CPU-bound scenarios, this processor will perform similarly to the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F, AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D, AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450, and Intel Core i9-12900T. In Barony, where the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at most settings, this performance parity is unlikely to produce noticeable differences in frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data across resolutions provides clear evidence of the system's scaling behavior. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 261 FPS average. Moving to 1440p Low, the frame rate drops to 165 FPS, a 37% reduction. At 4K Low, the frame rate falls to 86 FPS, a 48% reduction from 1440p and a 67% reduction from 1080p. This scaling pattern is consistent with GPU-bound performance, where the increased pixel count directly impacts frame rate.

At Medium settings, the scaling shows a similar trend: 194 FPS at 1080p, 123 FPS at 1440p (37% lower), and 64 FPS at 4K (48% lower than 1440p, 67% lower than 1080p). The consistency of these percentage drops across presets suggests that the limiting factor remains the same — the GPU's rendering throughput — regardless of the quality preset selected.

High settings demonstrate the same pattern: 167 FPS at 1080p, 105 FPS at 1440p (37% lower), and 55 FPS at 4K (48% lower than 1440p, 67% lower than 1080p). Ultra settings follow with 120 FPS at 1080p, 76 FPS at 1440p (37% lower), and 39 FPS at 4K (49% lower than 1440p, 68% lower than 1080p).

The uniformity of these percentage reductions — approximately 37% from 1080p to 1440p and 48% from 1440p to 4K — strongly indicates that the GPU is the consistent bottleneck across all tested settings. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see the frame rate differences between resolutions compress at lower settings, as the CPU would constrain performance regardless of pixel count. Instead, the frame rate drops almost exactly in proportion to the pixel count increase, confirming that the RTX 2060's rendering capabilities are the determining factor.

The 4K to 1440p reduction of roughly 48% aligns closely with the pixel count difference (4K has 2.25x the pixels of 1440p, which would predict a 56% reduction if perfectly scaling). The slightly smaller observed reduction suggests some inefficiency in the scaling, possibly due to the GPU's memory bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s becoming a secondary constraint. The 1440p to 1080p reduction of 37% is larger than the 44% pixel count difference would predict, indicating that at 1080p, the system approaches a different performance ceiling — likely the CPU or a combination of CPU and GPU limits at very high frame rates.

This scaling analysis confirms that for this combo, resolution is the primary variable affecting performance. Users seeking higher frame rates should prioritize reducing resolution over lowering quality settings, as the resolution scaling has a more predictable and significant impact on the frame rate. Conversely, at 1080p, the system has substantial headroom across all presets, with even Ultra maintaining 120 FPS average.